Design for Service

Jodi Forlizzi on Service Design

A former advisor of mine from CMU has a new article out at interactions magazine comparing service design and experience design. It covers familiar territory but one point that might seem unexpected is her characterization of service design (and UX) as sub disciplines of interaction design. It’s something Dick Buchanan alluded to in his closing keynote at Emergence three years ago.

For this to make any sense it helps to understand that the School of Design at CMU frames interaction design as something substantially more than digital interface design. Interaction design encompasses human interaction with objects, people, environments and systems.

It’s not a widely held perspective outside of the Pittsburgh diaspora. But over the past five years I’ve found the service design community to be far and away the most sympathetic with that spirit. That’s why I’m here.